The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality

Brilliant book, articulating several ideas that we as a 21st century society seems to have lost in recent times. This booked helped me classify several 'character traits' that is recognized in society, but we often lack a good vocabulary to express our thoughts surrounding 'character'. Highly recommended reading!

Fabulous book. Writing style somewhat like a dialog, but the content and substance is awesome. He has great insight into human nature. It's a very inspiring book, much like How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

This is a great book by presenting integrity in its entirety with lots of real-life stories and personal experiences to reflect its many aspects and features. I would definitely rate it as a five-star book on integrity!

One of the best books ever about what integrity means and how it applies to all of life. Been challenged to look deeply at how I live a life of integrity in all aspects - home, work, church, family, friends.

Bought this book at the suggestion of someone who buys it for every new employee. A VERY interesting reframing of the word "integrity." If you are someone on the line to produce results, work with other people, or operate at a high level, this book will be a great use of your time.

Great book outlining a personality trait that is required by all who seek to lead in whatever capacity, namely integrity or having money in the bank with people. Well written easy to read and essential for leaders.

We just finished a group discussion of Dr. Cloud's book, "Integrity". It was an outstanding conversation over the course of several weeks. It challenged us, encouraged us, and sharpened us as leaders, husbands, fathers, and pretty much every role in our lives.

Dr. Cloud illustrates the key behaviors a child needs to mature into adulthood. Without these key behaviors, children pretend to be responsible, but get tripped up by the truth that they are not prepared. Buy this book, read it, talk to other parents, then offer these ideas to your child so that have a yardstick to decide if they are ready to start "adulting"

Concept of integrity borrowed from spiritual theory without the spiritual aspects so the practice integrity suggested by the author is just a bunch of characteristics. Doesn't get deeper on how to integrate.

Very insightful and personally challenging. It might be wise to read some of his earlier works, along with Dr. Henry Townsend collaboration "Safe People". His writings require a greater understanding of discernment in many areas of our lives.

I have trouble with the author's abstraction of concepts; what he says fits what he wants it to mean. His grammar is a distraction, while he tries to keep it conversational, it comes across as poor grammar to me. Psychologists have to work extra hard with me, and I do resist advice in general, but this guy seems to be hiding behind his degree.

"Integrity" by Henry Cloud is a good title that addresses the character issue of integrity. Cloud interprets the word as a person who is a whole, does not act in a way contrary to his or her makeup, and is not afraid to confront issues in his or her life.

In the book Cloud mentions numerous examples of people who failed in their careers because of some character flaw:

1. Unwillingness to confront problem employees.
2. Narcissism - attempts to feel so good about self that thorny issues are not confronted because doing so would create discomfort in one's life.
3. Selfishness - being "nice" to people but not also looking out for them and instead focusing on your own interests.
4. Other flaws.

Cloud mentions several clients (not by real name) and how he helped the client address a particular issue or event.

Cloud offers some solutions in dealing with and developing character by:

1. Building trust with others through: connection, looking out for other's interest, and being vulnerable to others.
2. Learning to finish well in life.
3. Not being afraid to confront and deal with difficult issues and potential character flaws that if left untreated, can ruin your life.
4. Desiring to grow and mature as you get older.
5. Getting involved in something larger than your own existence.

The book is a good read and I enjoyed the title. I recently finished reading a newer title by Cloud entitled "One-Life Solution" and think I liked that title better.

Still, a good read and recommended. Enjoy and be challenged!

Henry Cloud, PH.D, executive consultant to over 500 corporations, provides insights on the correlation of integrity to leadership and life success in "Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality." Cloud uses his experience from over twenty years of working with people from all walks of life to highlight key "personal issues that keep some of them stuck and cause others to be amazing performers."

Cloud initially outlines the three essentials for success - competency, alliance building, and character. He points out that the people who possess the first two qualities are a "dime-a-dozen." But to truly make it, one must have the third ingredient. "They have to have character to not screw it up."

The book's core message centers on character and what Cloud details as "the character" that:

1. Creates and Maintains Trust
2. Is able to see and face reality
3. Works in a way that brings results
4. Embraces negative realities and solves them
5. Achieves transcendence and meaning in life

Cloud shows us "how these character traits supercede gifts, talents, and ability, and how the ones who have them succeed, and the ones who don't, ultimately fail. Integrity, he maintains, is critical to meet the rigors of our journey. Three areas that character will impact along the way include:

1. Our ability to reach to reach full potential and not getting stuck below our abilities.
2. Our ability to hit an obstacle but not letting it derail us.
3. Our ability to reach great success but not to self-destruct and lose it all.

This is not your run-of-the-mill "leadership literature or success principles, or about casting a vision, or how to become a change agent." Rather, "Integrity" provides insight and a path for personal improvement. As we are all imperfect humans with chinks in our armor, the path includes:

* Identifying personal "gaps" to work on.
* Learning how to accept ourselves.
* And resolving the gaps to avoid the traps lying in wait.

Cloud's "Integrity" provides a proven way to connect the dots showing us how integrity of character works everyday, "and how it affects our real results in areas of life which matter to us most - a way to more profits (business) and/or more faithful relationships (life).

Dr. Cloud's book on integrity primarily makes applications to the "business" world. However, I read this book as part of a "preacher training" program, and still found it to be entirely relevant to my line of work. The reason is because the subject matter of this book ultimately transcends the context it was written in. No matter what a person decides to do for a living, character counts.

One of the biggest things I appreciated about this book was the fact that it did not dwell on or limit itself merely to the subject of "honesty." In fact, the author assumes ahead of time that his readers already understand the importance of merely being honest. (Let's face it, if my life were centered around lying to other people and taking advantage of other people, would I really read a book called, "Integrity"?) What this book does instead is open the reader up to the need for self-honesty. Having good intentions is not the same thing as having integrity. What is needed by many people in today's world is a healthy does of realism, and this book is a major step towards providing it.

I would recommend this book to literally anyone. Even though this book was "outside my field," I still found it to be more helpful than a lot of books "inside my field."

This is rare book in terms of solid theoretical insight into human behavior, coming essentially from Dr Cloud's extensive experience as a clinical psychologist combined with analysis and inference drawn from his consulting experience with business leaders and CEOs.

The introductory chapters however lack the punch and clarity on what the book is about does not emerge initially. This is perhaps because in my opinion, the approach and definition of the topic of integrity of character is radically new and takes some time to understand. The definition that integrity is much beyond and higher than just honesty and ethics and is about the courage to meet the demands of reality is difficult to comprehend at the beginning. Thereafter the book devotes one part each to the six dimensions of integrity - Establishing trust, Orientation toward reality, Getting results, Embracing the negative, Orientation toward increase and Orientation toward transcendence. Each of these facets as I like to call are like the sides of a hexagon; equally important to create the whole.

The depth of discussions of each of the six dimensions is accompanied by actual case studies and quotes from some of the best business books. In the part devoted to Establishing Trust, Dr Cloud narrates a situation in which a CEO completely fails to convince his people on the benefits of a merger. In fact the meeting intended to get the buy-in of the folks turns counter productive. The CEO was talking, but not communicating. He failed to empathize to some of the genuine concerns of the people thereby ending up alienating the team.

In the chapter `In touch with reality" Dr Cloud starts with the story of the CEO of a dog food company who obstinately tries all possible ways to increase the sales of the company's product except in finding out what his ultimate customers really want. When finally explained to the CEO by an employee "Sir... the dogs don't like it", reality finally dawns. Dogs bark, but reality bites!

In many chapters I found commonality in inferences to CEOs' achieving corporate results and to success of marriages. Perhaps this is a reflection of Dr Cloud's typical mix of clientele.

The six dimensions are well sequenced and are interrelated. Ignorance or failure of one dimension can lead to overall nonperformance explains Dr Cloud. The "gap" in a person who lacks the wholeness of character is bound to result in failure in three specific ways and to quote from the book (page 38):
1. Hitting performance ceiling that is much lower than ones aptitude
2. Hitting an obstacle or situation that derails you
3. Reaching great success only to self destruct and lose it all.

This book was presented to me by a colleague. While I thank him for the wonderful gift, trust me, I loved it and shall do my best to put it into practice to fill in my gaps.

I remember discussing integrity with a successful businessman. He thought that you either had integrity or you did not, and if you did not have it he would not hire you. The problem is that I have never met anyone who was completely trustworthy, and I have never met anyone who was completely untrustworthy. And there is a lot more to integrity than trustworthiness.

Henry Cloud identifies six aspects of integrity in his book Integrity: establishing trust, orientation towards truth, getting results, embracing the negative, orientation towards increase, and orientation towards transcendence. While I am not sure I would have picked exactly the same components of integrity, I found the book to be a very useful exploration of what needs to happen below the surface of honesty.

A person who has integrity is not just someone who tells the truth. It is someone who also understands and communicates well with other people, who has a firm grip on reality, who tells it like it is, who has the persistence and fortitude to see things through to the end, who listens to criticism and is willing to endure confrontation and do the difficult jobs, who is always learning, and who understands that he or she is a small person in a very big world.